Lightning Labs’ Taro Project Faces Halt as Judge Issues Temporary Injunction for Trademark Infringement
Frederick Munawa is a Technology Reporter for Coindesk. He covers blockchain protocols with a specific focus on bitcoin and bitcoin-adjacent networks.
Blockchain software development firm Tari Labs sued Bitcoin infrastructure firm Lightning Labs in December for trademark infringement over the use of the name “Taro” – Lightning’s protocol that allows users to issue assets such as stablecoins on the Bitcoin blockchain.
On Wednesday, Judge William H. Orrick issued a temporary injunction forcing Lightning Labs to halt further development of Taro until the project has been sufficiently rebranded. In its complaint, Tari argued that it and Lightning “compete in the same digital blockchain ecosystem, provide similar, and in some instances identical, goods and services, market to similar developers and users, and appear on the same blockchain platforms.”
The lawsuit has drawn criticism from several members of the open source community who insist that trademark enforcement has no place in free and open source software (FOSS).
